On which Seven looked up and said, `That's
right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!'

`YOU'D better not talk!', said Five. `I
heard the Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!'

`What for?' said the one who had spoken
first.

`That's none of YOUR business, Two!'
said Seven.

`Yes, it IS his business!' said Five,
`and I'll tell him--it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots
instead of onions.'

Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun
`Well, of all the unjust things--' when his eye chanced
to fall upon Alice, as she stood watching them, and he checked
himself suddenly: the others looked round also, and all of them
bowed low.

Image: A.E. Jackson, 1915

`Would you tell me,'
said Alice, a little timidly, `why you are painting those roses?'

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked
at Two. Two began in a low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, Miss,
this here ought to have been a RED rose-tree, and we put a white one in
by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our
heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore
she comes, to--' At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking
across the garden, called out `The Queen! The Queen!' and the three
gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was
a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.

First came ten soldiers carrying clubs;
these were all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with
their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were
ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers
did. After these came the royal children; there were ten of them, and
the little dears came jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples:
they were all ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings
and Queens, and among them Alice recognised the White Rabbit: it was talking
in a hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and
went by without noticing her.

Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the
King's crown on a crimson velvet
cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came THE KING AND
QUEEN OF HEARTS.

Image: Lewis Carroll

Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought
not to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not
remember every having heard of such a rule at processions; `and besides,
what would be the use of a procession,' thought she, `if people
had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it?'
So she stood still where she was, and waited.

When the procession came opposite to Alice,
they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said severely `Who
is this?' She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled
in reply.

`Idiot!' said the Queen, tossing
her head impatiently; and, turning to Alice, she went on, `What's your
name, child?'

`My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,'
said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, `Why, they're
only a pack of cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them!'

`And who are THESE?' said the Queen, pointing
to the three gardeners who were lying round the rosetree; for,
you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on
their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not
tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or
three of her own children.

`How should I know?' said Alice, surprised
at her own courage. `It's no business of MINE.'

The Queen turned crimson
with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild
beast, screamed `Off with her head! Off--'

Image: A.E. Jackson, 1915

Image: Maria Kirk - 1904

`Nonsense!' said Alice, very loudly and
decidedly, and the Queen was silent.

The King laid his hand upon her arm, and
timidly said `Consider, my dear: she is only a child!'

The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said
to the Knave `Turn them over!'

The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.

`Get up!' said the Queen, in a shrill,
loud voice, and the three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began
bowing to the King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody
else.

`Leave off that!' screamed the Queen.
`You make me giddy.' And then, turning to the rose-tree,
she went on, `What HAVE you been doing here?'

`May it please your Majesty,' said Two,
in a very humble tone, going down on one knee as he spoke, `we
were trying--'

Image: Arthur Rackham, 1907

Image: Arthur Rackham, 1907

`I see!' said the Queen, who had meanwhile
been examining the roses.

`Off with their heads!'

and the procession moved on, three of the soldiers
remaining behind to execute the unfortunate gardeners, who ran
to Alice for protection.

`You shan't be beheaded!' said Alice,
and she put them into a large flower-pot that stood near.

The three soldiers wandered about for a minute
or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the
others.

Image: Bessie Pease Gutmann, 1907

`Are their heads off?'
shouted the Queen.

`Their heads are gone, if it please
your Majesty!' the soldiers shouted in reply.

`That's right!' shouted the Queen.

`Can you play croquet?'

The soldiers were silent, and looked at
Alice, as the question was evidently meant for her.

`Yes!' shouted Alice.

`Come on, then!' roared the Queen,
and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen
next.

`It's--it's a very fine day!' said
a timid voice at her side. She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was
peeping anxiously into her face.

`Very,' said Alice: `--where's
the Duchess?'

`Hush! Hush!' said the Rabbit in
a low, hurried tone. He looked anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke,
and then raised himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and
whispered `She's under sentence of execution.'

`What for?' said Alice.

`Did you say "What a pity!"?' the
Rabbit asked.

`No, I didn't,' said Alice: `I
don't think it's at all a pity. I said "What for?"'

`She boxed the Queen's ears--' the
Rabbit began. Alice gave a little scream of laughter. `Oh, hush!'
the Rabbit whispered in a frightened tone. `The Queen will hear you!
You see, she came rather late, and the Queen said--'

`Image: Lewis CarrollGet to your places!'
shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running
about in all directions, tumbling up against each other; however,
they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began.

Image: Sir John Tenniel - 1865
1890 Nursery Version

Image: Lewis Carroll

Alice thought she had never seen such
a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows;
the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and
the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands
and feet, to make the arches.

The chief difficulty Alice found at
first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its
body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs
hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely
straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with
its head, it WOULD twist itself round and look up in her face, with
such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing:and
when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it
was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself,
and was in the act of crawling away:

Image: Maria Kirk - 1904

besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow
in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up
soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the
ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult
game indeed.

Image: Sir John Tenniel - 1865

The players all played at once without waiting
for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs;
and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and
went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!'
or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute.

Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure,
she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew
that it might happen any minute, `and then,' thought she,
`what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading
people here; the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!'

She was looking about for some way of escape,
and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when
she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very
much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made
it out to be a grin, and she said to herself `It's the Cheshire
Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.'

`How are you getting on?' said the Cat,
as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.

Image:Disney

Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and
then nodded. `It's no use speaking to it,' she thought, `till
its ears have come, or at least one of them.' In another minute the
whole head appeared, and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began an
account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her.
The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and
no more of it appeared.

`I don't think they play at all fairly,'
Alice began, in rather a complaining tone,' and they all quarrel so dreadfully
one can't hear oneself speak--and they don't seem to have any rules in
particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them--and you've
no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance,
there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other
end of the ground--and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just
now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming?'

`How do you like the Queen?' said
the Cat in a low voice.

`Not at all,' said Alice: `she's
so extremely--' Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind
her, listening: so she went on, `--likely to win, that it's hardly
worth while finishing the game.'

The Queen smiled and passed on.

`Who ARE you talking to?' said the
King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity.

`I don't like the look of it at all,'
said the King: `however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.'

`I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.

`Don't be impertinent,' said the
King, `and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as
he spoke.

`A cat may look at a king,' said
Alice. `I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where.'

`Well, it must be removed,'
said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing
at the moment, `My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!'

The Queen had only one way of settling
all difficulties, great or small. `Off with his head!' she said,
without even looking round.

`I'll fetch the executioner myself,'
said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.

Alice thought she might as well go back,
and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen's voice in the
distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three
of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did
not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion
that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search
of her hedgehog.

The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with
another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting
one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo
was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see
it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.

By the time she had caught the flamingo
and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out
of sight: `but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as all
the arches are gone from the side of the ground.' So she tucked it
away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for
a little more conversation with her friend.

When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she
was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was
a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who
were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked
very uncomfortable.

Image: Gwynedd M. Hudson, 1922

Image: Sir John Tenniel - 1865

The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed
to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments
to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed
to make out exactly what they said.

The executioner's argument was, that you
couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that
he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin
at HIS time of life.

The King's argument was, that anything
that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.

The Queen's argument was, that if something
wasn't done about it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed,
all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look
so grave and anxious.)

Alice could think of nothing else to say
but `It belongs to the Duchess: you'd better ask HER about it.'

`She's in prison,' the Queen said
to the executioner: `fetch her here.' And the executioner went
off like an arrow.

The Cat's head began fading away the
moment he was gone, and, by the time he had disappeared; so the
King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it,
while the rest of the party went back to the game.